Eurovision Song Contest 2000

 Olsen Brothers

Date: May 13, 2000
Venue: Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden
Presenters: Kattis Åhlström, Anders Lundin
Director: Marius Bratten
Scruteneer: Christine Marchal-Ortiz
Host broadcaster: SVT
Interval act: Street Musicians from Stockholm
Duration: 3 hours, 2 minutes
Number of entries: 24
Debuting countries: Latvia
Returning countries: Finland, F.Y.R. Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Switzerland
Withdrawing countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia
Winning Song: Fly on the Wings of Love - Olsen Brothers, Denmark
Voting system: Each country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 points to their 10 favourite songs

Entries

01. Israel: PingPong - Sameyakh (22nd place, 7 points)
02. The Netherlands: Linda Wagenmakers - No goodbyes (13th place, 40 points)
03. UK: Nicki French - Don't play that song again (16th place, 28 points)
04. Estonia: Ines - Once in a lifetime (4th place, 98 points)
05. France: Sofia Mestari - On aura le ciel (23rd place, 5 points)
06. Romania: Taxi - the moon (17th place, 25 points)
07. Malta: Claudette Pace - Desire (8th place, 73 points0
08. Norway: Charmed - My heart goes boom (11th place, 57 points)
09. Russia: Alsou - Solo (2nd place, 155 points)
10. Belgium: Nathalie Sorce - Envie de vivre (24th place, 2 points0
11. Cyprus: voice - Nomiza (21st place, 8 points)
12. Iceland: August & Telma - Tell me! (12th place, 45 points)
13. Spain: Serafín Zubiri - Colgado de un sueño (18th place, 18 points)
14. Denmark: Olsen Brothers - Fly on the wings of love (1st place, 195 points)
15. Germany: Stefan Raab - Wadde hadde dudde da? (5th place, 96 points)
16. Switzerland: Jane Bogaert - La vita cos'è? (20th place, 14 points)
17. Croatia: Goran Karan - Kad zaspu andeli (9th place, 70 points)
18. Sweden: Roger Pontare - When Spirits Are Calling My Name (7th place, 88 points)
19. F.Y.R. Macedonia: XXL - 100% te ljubam (15th place, 29 points)
20. Finland: Nina Åström - A little bit (18th place, 18 points)
21. Latvia: Brainstorm - My star (3rd place, 136 points)
22. Turkey: Pinar Ayhan & the SOS - Yorgunum anla (10th place, 59 points)
23. Ireland: Eamonn Toal - Millennium of love (6th place, 92 points)
24. Austria: The Rounder Girls - All to you (14th place, 34 points)

 Linda Wagenmakers

The Eurovision Song Contest 2000 was the 45th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 13 May 2000 at the Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, following Charlotte Nilsson's victory in Jerusalem the previous year. It was the first time since 1996 that the contest was held on mainland Europe. The contest was the second to be held in Stockholm, and the fourth held in Sweden. The presenters were Kattis Ahlström and Anders Lundin, and the contest was won by the Olsen Brothers who represented Denmark with the song Fly on the Wings of Love (originally: Smuk som et stjerneskud). The song was written by one of the brothers, Jørgen Olsen.

Format

The Globe Arena was, at the time, the largest venue chosen to host the contest with a capacity of 16,000 spectators. The postcards used to introduce each country participating involved Swedish themes that incorporated each nation in some respect. The logo for the contest, a pair of open mouth lips, was chosen by SVT, and was described by its designers as "a sensual, yet stylistically pure mouth representing song, dialogue and speech", and was later one of the possible choices for the generic logo introduced at the 2004 Contest.

The favourite in this year's contest was Estonia, who was also a fan favourite and praised by the press. However, as the voting results came in, Denmark immediately took control of the scoreboard, beating Russia into second place and Latvia into 3rd place.

For the first time, an official CD compilation was released; it contained all of the songs of the participating nations and was available throughout Europe. Such a disc was attempted in the previous year, however it lacked four of the competing songs.

Participating countries

Slovakia, Greece and Hungary decided not to compete for financial reasons. The countries with the five lowest average scores over the previous five contests who had participated in 1999, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia were excluded meaning that five countries could return. These countries were: Finland, Macedonia, Romania, Russia and Switzerland. Latvia also joined contest as the only country to debut.

 Ines

Incidents

There were some controversies concerning some participating countries. Israel, who opened the contest, entered a group who waved Israeli and Syrian flags advocating peace between the two nations. The two male singers in the group also ran up to each other and kissed for a brief moment. The Russian delegation petitioned for the winning Olsen Brothers to be disqualified, after they had used a vocoder to give Jørgen Olsen an electronic sound to his voice, during one of the verses of their performance. This issue was rejected by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The intermission during the finale of the ESC was Once Upon a Time Europe Was Covered With Ice, a movie/song directed, composed and edited by Johan Söderberg and produced by John Nordling. For the film Söderberg had traveled all over Europe to record children performing the score. On stage were violinist Caroline Lundgren, drummer Strängnäs Trumkorps plus street musicians from Stockholm and dancers from the Bounce Street Dance Company.

In the Netherlands, NOS decided to take the Contest off air halfway through because of the Enschede fireworks disaster that happened earlier that day, so it could use the channel for continuous news broadcasts. Later, NOS declared that it was both for practical reasons as well as because they found it "inappropriate to broadcast a light entertainment programme on the night of such a catastrophic event". As a result, televoting had to be suspended and the Dutch votes were given by a stand-by jury instead.

The contest was also broadcast in Canada, Australia, Japan, the United States and via the internet for the first time.

Voting

According to the EBU rules of the 45th Eurovision Song Contest 2000 (published on 23 September 1999), all participating countries should have used televoting, where the top ten most voted for songs were awarded the 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points. In exceptional circumstances where televoting was not possible, a jury was used instead: Russia, Macedonia, Turkey and Romania. The Dutch votes were the votes of the backup jury due to interrupted broadcasting of the contest in the Netherlands because of the fireworks disaster in the Dutch town of Enschede.

Returning artists

Three artists returned to the ESC this year. Alexandros Panayi, member of Voice, represented Cyprus in 1995, Serafín Zubiri participated Sweden in 1992 and Roger Pontare represented Sweden in 1994.